


you rise with the moon

by rain_sleet_snow



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Badass Katara (Avatar), Diplomacy, F/M, Fire Lord Zuko, Northern Water Tribe, POV Katara (Avatar), Peacemaker Zuko, Pre-Het, Religion, Shippy Gen, Southern Water Tribe, The Spirit Oasis, Waterbending & Waterbenders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-13
Updated: 2019-02-13
Packaged: 2019-10-27 17:47:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17771387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: After the war, Katara and Zuko cross paths at the Spirit Oasis and talk about spirits, sacrifice, leadership, betrothals (their own), and fear (other people's).When you saved the world before you were old enough to drink, it's nice to know there's still someone you can be sharp-edged with.





	you rise with the moon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sixtywattgloom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sixtywattgloom/gifts).



Katara had crossed the world, seen wonders, fought a queen, saved an Avatar, and slept among the clouds, but there was nowhere she felt more at peace than at the Spirit Oasis of Tui and La. She sometimes wondered whether she ought to set up something in the South Pole that might in time provide the same kind of contemplative place to anchor the Southern Water Tribe's relationship with the spirits that guided them all, but in the meantime, here she was, and everything was perfect.

Few people were aware of the secret spring and even fewer were permitted to enter. But these days people tended not to argue with Katara when it came to waterbending, and the guards on the sanctuary had stepped aside when she came to visit. Katara could almost guarantee that she would be left alone, too, because only the guards knew she was here. When she had excused herself from her rooms, Aang and Sokka had been too busy trying to wrap their minds around a correspondence game of pai-sho to ask her where she was going. 

She might have been annoyed about that, but it was bliss just to be alone, surrounded by the high ice walls and the grass-carpeted shrine of the sanctuary. She stripped down to her tunic and leggings, careful not to crumple her nice clothes or disarrange her ceremonial hairstyle. It had been put up using guesswork and an old book of Southern Water Tribe customary styles and fashions, and short of freezing it into place Katara had no idea how to fix if it fell down. It needed to get through the evening, if at all possible, but it seemed to be holding up well and provided Katara didn't do anything stupid she gave herself fairly good odds of making that happen. The only remotely strenuous activity she had planned was participation in a display of waterbending skill at the evening banquet - as opposed to the ceremonial lunch, the morning parade, and, for all Katara knew, the very fancy afternoon tea - to mark the arrival of Fire Lord Zuko. The Northern Water Tribe was pulling out all the stops. The sheer noise and bustle that entailed was one reason Katara had slipped away to the Spirit Oasis.

Katara rolled up her calf-length leggings to her knees, and slipped her feet into the pool. It was warm; not blood warm, but close to. La ignored her, but Tui swam right up to her and described a tight circle around her ankles before darting away; Katara laughed, and wondered if there was a faint blue tinge to Tui's scales, the same blue as Yue's eyes.

Sokka would probably be able to tell. All the more reason not to ask. It would put him off his fast talking, and in order for the Fire Nation's embassy and offer of reparations to succeed, Sokka needed to be talking double-time.

They all knew that Zuko was standing on the thinnest possible ice in his appearance here. Only his personal credit as a peacemaker, the fact that he had duelled the Butcher of the Northern Tribes, and the widespread belief that hadn't been present during Zhao's attack on the city, made it possible for him to sail the city's waterways without being drowned. Aang, Katara, Zuko and Sokka were keeping tactfully quiet about the fact that he had, in fact, been at the battle, and had actually kidnapped the Avatar halfway through. There would have been a riot if anyone had known.

Katara knew she was here for protection. Whether she was here to protect the city from Zuko or Zuko from the city was an open question.

She emptied her mind of politics, raised her head to the sky and her arms from her sides; turned her palms outwards to the cliffs, and her wrists to the pool below. The water rose with her, and under the light of a spring moon, Katara danced. In the harbours the tide was high and lively, but never so much so that it threatened the ships there, and the clouds passed over the sky's surface with a quick scudding motion like sails before the wind. A pearly ring gathered around the moon's face, and Tui and La circled the waters of the pool in perfect calm.

Katara spun on the surface of the water, sank ankle deep and raised bright tendrils to the sky. She let them fall without splashing, perfectly controlled, and formed them into a twisting circle with no end and no beginning. She passed names through her mind as she danced, commending them to the care and comfort of the spirits who had guided her through the waters and the tides, and wondered if this was what praying was. Religion at the South Pole had been a practical matter of thanks given over bloody carcasses, chants uttered over frozen bodies, and desperate hopes when black snow fell from the clouds: the only formal prayers Katara recalled had come from her grandmother, when the spirits danced in the night sky, their bright gowns flaring out behind them. 

As a matter of fact, those prayers might be where some of her dancing was coming from. Katara was increasingly beginning to realise that she had no idea what some of the forms she was in the habit of using actually were, and it would be nice if old memories or a wider experience of the world than most waterbenders had explained that particular puzzle. Master Pakku had not taught her all the forms she used, Hama certainly had not taught them to her, and no waterbender Katara had yet found could identify them. But she didn’t feel as if she was making them up, either. 

Maybe it hadn't been a good idea to admit to that. Other waterbenders all looked at her strangely, now, and most of them would not face her on the practice courts. The only waterbenders willing to tell her off were Yugoda and the other healers, who found her technique sloppy relative to her expertise. Katara was grateful for that. At least someone was willing to help her improve.

She had probably trespassed on Tui and La's goodwill too much. She stepped out of the pool, and went through her pockets until she found the cold box Sokka had made. She pulled it out and opened it, taking out the little stand with its two dints and using it to hold the two ice-sticks she had made with flowers and leaves from the gardens at the last port they'd stopped at. Hopefully they would do as offerings. Until people stopped looking sideways at her for knowing too much about some things and not enough about others Katara would follow her heart and whatever written advice she could find, and the books had been pretty silent on proper offerings for Tui and La.

Fish, she assumed, were right out.

She settled herself cross-legged, and began to meditate. This lasted for an entire thirty seconds, on account of a small door coming open behind her, and Fire Lord Zuko appearing.

"Uh... sorry to disturb."

Katara cracked her eyes open for the express purpose of rolling them, and congratulated herself on not immediately leaping up and settling into a fighting stance - a habit she was trying to break, since it upset her father and grandmother. "What are you doing here?" 

"I have an offering."

"For Tui and La?"

"No. For the spirit of the departed."

"Yue?" Katara blinked, rubbed her eyes, and wondered if Sokka had ever explained exactly what happened to Princess Yue. Zuko had witnessed at least part of it, but she didn't think he'd understood, since no-one had told him then that Princess Yue owed her life (and her distinctive colouring) to the spirit of the moon.

Zuko knelt down beside her and nodded. He was not wearing his formal gear, but white practical clothes like those he had once used to break into the city, and the flame in his topknot was less ostentatious than usual. "I admire her. For what she did."

Maybe Sokka had explained. 

"She sacrificed herself for her people and for the world, without hesitating. She felt she owed a debt and she paid it. She was the most unselfish person I'd ever seen. And the first example I'd ever seen of a sovereign who served her people rather than expecting them to serve her."

Sokka or not, someone had definitely explained. 

Katara said nothing. Zuko fidgeted for a few moments, then pulled a small round box from his capacious sleeve. Inside lay a beauty that made Katara's breath catch: a single flower, made of silver and mother-of-pearl and blue jade, each material melting seamlessly into the next, a perfect artistic expression of harmony. If you looked at it another way, the flower's petals were waves.

"It's beautiful," she said. "But it'll tarnish." She almost winced, hearing what she'd said, but then remembered this was Zuko, and if she could dish it he could take it. (And probably dish it right back.)

"No, it won't. Toph sealed it all in crystal," Zuko said, apparently unaffected. He looked around, and scratched his head. The flame in his topknot went slightly wonky, and he straightened it as if he didn’t even have to think about doing it. "I don't know where to put it, though. There are no altars."

"Well, Yue became Tui, and Tui is in the pool." Katara gestured at the fish in question. 

"I don't want to intrude."

"I just spent like half an hour dancing in there."

Zuko pulled an extremely funny face. "Yeah, but Katara, you're... you."

"Exactly. A peasant girl from the Southern Water Tribe."

"In the streets they're calling you the Moon's Sister and saying you must have been kissed by La," Zuko said, very dryly.

"Sister-in-law, if you want to get technical," Katara said. "And Aang was once possessed by La, so I guess..."

"If you want to play six degrees of separation with the spirit world you need to talk to Uncle." Zuko considered the pool. "If La bites my hand off, it was in a good cause."

"I don't think he will," Katara said, and waited until Zuko had all five fingers underwater before saying "I heard he ate Zhao whole."

"Good riddance to bad rubbish." Zuko leaned precariously out over the bank to slip the flower into the very centre, and then retreated to the grass to prostrate himself before the pool for several long moments.

In the water, La nosed the flower, then spun around it in a grudging circle before swimming off elsewhere. Tui dedicated considerably greater attention to it. Katara watched.

Zuko raised his head, and stared up at the moon in silence for another long moment. "That ring means something, doesn't it."

"Further south," Katara said, "I would say it was going to rain."

"Huh. Well." Zuko settled himself cross-legged. "How'd you get in here? The guards seemed pretty strict."

"They didn’t bother me." Katara shrugged and bumped her shoulder companionably against his. "They didn't actually say anything to me. How did you get in here?"

"Uh, my emissaries were told to get stuffed when they even hinted that a sanctuary might exist, so I went to consult some papers in my rooms and that's what I'm doing now. Allegedly." Zuko slouched, and then straightened up self-consciously with an anxious glance at the spirits. "There's always a back door. Someone's got to mow the grass."

Katara wasn't sure about that.

"It's peaceful here," Zuko said. "I bet nobody would dream of disturbing you."

"Is this leading up to something?" 

"No." Zuko re-crossed his legs. "Actually, yeah."

"If you want betrothal advice, ask someone else." Katara cut her eyes sideways at him, and watched Zuko blush. It showed oddly against his scar, but it was familiarly endearing. "I'm told I'm above negotiations or courting. Either people think I'm already married to the Avatar -"

"Aang's _fifteen_."

"People are confused about how old we are because of what we've done. Anyway, either people think I'm already married to the Avatar, or they think... I'm too powerful to be a bride." Katara turned a long blade of grass around one finger. "Says a lot about what they think about brides."

"Have you met any of Toph's suitors?"

Katara shook her head.

"Neither has she. She had Ty Lee read her the descriptions aloud and dismissed them all out of hand."

They both snorted with laughter. Then Zuko put his face into his hands, rubbed his cheeks, and leaned all the way back so that he was staring up at the moon his father's general had tried to kill.

"Katara." 

"Yes?"

"How do you deal with people who are frightened of you?"

Katara's breath caught. That was the question, wasn't it.

She thought of Pakku, whose eyes had grown a little wider with every sentence of her tale of the battle against Azula, every technique that Hama had shown her, and - worst of all - every form she had invented for herself without really thinking that she was inventing them at all. She thought of her father, uneasy around her raw power even as he loved her. She thought of the arrogant young men who had once not hesitated to fight her, and who now touched the ice before her feet and begged to learn from her. She thought of the guards and courtiers who had looked with condescension on the Southern peasants who had fought their way north to find the Avatar a teacher, and who now bowed their heads before her.

Sometimes it felt good. Other times...

"I don't," she said. "I run away to very sacred Spirit Oases and dance in the water. What do you do?"

"Still working on that. Read legislation, mostly. The words are just words. They mean what they're supposed to and they don't flatter me out of fear." Zuko sighed. "You know what I would be most grateful for, if the spirit of the Moon saw fit to grant it to me?"

"What?" 

"Princess Yue's _patience_. From what Sokka says, she must have been still as a mountain even when everyone was an idiot. Most of the time I want to kick my ministers' teeth through their skulls."

Katara laughed harder than she expected to. "She was. Still and patient, I mean."

There was a long silence.

"You'd better get out of here before you're missed," Katara said eventually. She got to her feet, and hauled Zuko to his.

"Just remember," he said, without letting go of her hand. His eyes looked a brighter gold in the cool blue light. "There's one bender in this city who isn't afraid to kick your ass if you need it."

Katara snorted, but felt a smile spread across her face. "I'll bear it in mind."

He forgot the flower box. Katara smuggled it out in her boot, and winked at him when she met him at the evening banquet.


End file.
